Revelation can be more perilous than
Revolution. Sick minds identified the notion of a Terra planet with that of
another world and this 'Other World' got confused not only with the 'Next World'
but with the Real World in us and beyond us. Our enchanters,
our demons, are noble iridescent creatures with translucent talons and
mightily beating wings; but in the eighteen-sixties the New Believers urged one
to imagine a sphere where our splendid friends had been utterly degraded, had
become nothing but vicious monsters, disgusting devils, with the black scrota of
carnivora and the fangs of serpents, revilers and tormentors of female souls;
while on the opposite side of the cosmic lane a rainbow mist of angelic spirits,
inhabitants of sweet Terra, restored all the stalest but still potent myths of
old creeds, with rearrangement for melodeon of all the cacophonies of all the
divinities and divines ever spawned in the marshes of this our sufficient
world. (1.3)
Ada is set on Demonia or Antiterra, Earth's (or/and
Terra's) twin planet.
In Voloshin's poem Voina ("The War," 1923) included
in the cycle Putyami Kaina ("The Paths of Cain") the voice from
the abyss of inner space says:
«Время
Топтать точило ярости. За то,
Что
люди демонам,
Им посланным служить,
Тела построили
И создали
престолы,
За то, что гневу
Огня раскрыли волю
В разбеге жерл и в
сжатости ядра,
За то, что безразличью
Текущих вод и жаркого тумана
Дали
мускул
Бегущих ног и вихри колеса,
За то, что в своевольных
Теченьях
воздуха
Сплели гнездо мятежным духам взрыва,
За то, что жадность руд
В
рать пауков железных превратили,
Неумолимо ткущих
Сосущие и душащие
нити,—
За то освобождаю
Пленённых демонов
От клятв покорности,
А
хаос, сжатый в вихрях вещества,
От строя музыки!
Даю им власть над
миром,
Покамест люди
Не победят их вновь,
В себе самих смирив и
поборов
Гнев, жадность, своеволье, безразличье».
The demons were sent to serve people. But people made bodies
for the (until then invisible) demons and built thrones for them. The voice
(belonging to Apollyon, an angel of destruction also known as
Abaddon) proclaims the captive demons free from the oaths of obedience and
the Chaos compressed in the whirlwinds of matter free from the harmony of music.
It gives the demons power over the world until people conquer them again by
restraining and mastering in themselves wrath, greed, wilfulness and
indifference. The first version of this poem, "Apollyon," appeared in Voloshin's
book Anno Mundi Ardentis (1915).
Demon is the society nickname of poor mad Aqua's husband
(btw., the water of the Flood is mentioned in Voloshin's poem). Van and Ada are
children of Demon. In Blok's poem Vozmezdie ("Retribution," 1910-21),
the hero's father is known as Demon. He received his nickname thanks to
Dostoevski (who appears in Blok's poem as a character). According to
Dostoevski, the hero's father resembled Byron. "He is Byron,
ergo he is a demon," everybody thought. Byron is the author of
Cain (1821). Byron's tragedy was translated to Russian by Bunin, the
author of a memoir essay on Voloshin.
"The New Believers" mentioned by Van bring to mind
starovery, the Old Believers. Voloshin is the author of Protopop
Avvakum ("The Archpriest Avvakum," 1918). The leader of the Old Believers
and one of the first Russian memoirists, author of Zhitie Protopopa
Avvakuma ("The Life of Archpriest Avvakum," 1672), Avvakum Petrov (1621-82)
was burnt in Pustosyorsk.
It almost awed one to see the pleasure
with which she [Ada] and Demon distorted their
shiny-lipped mouths in exactly the same way to introduce orally from some
heavenly height the voluptuous ally of the prim lily of the valley, holding the
shaft with an identical bunching of the fingers, not unlike the reformed ‘sign
of the cross’ for protesting against which (a ridiculous little schism measuring
an inch or so from thumb to index) so many Russians had been burnt by other
Russians only two centuries earlier on the banks of the Great Lake of
Slaves. (1.38)
Alexey Sklyarenko